// Guide · Dopamine detox
A dopamine detox schedule that doesn’t start with cold turkey
Most detox plans say: delete everything for 30 days. Most people last three. Here is a slower schedule, and the honest version of the science behind it.
What a detox actually does
A detox doesn’t lower your dopamine. Dopamine rises when you get a reward, and it doesn’t drop because you skip one. What going without does is break a habit loop: the cue (boredom, a notification, lying in bed), the action (open the app), the reward (the next video). Fewer repetitions, weaker loop.
Harvard Health: “Dopamine fasting: Misunderstanding science spawns a maladaptive fad”
Why cold turkey fails
Cutting everything at once makes the first days the hardest of the whole plan, right when the habit is strongest. The urge spikes, you break once, and a broken all-or-nothing plan feels like a failed plan. A schedule that starts small survives the first week, and the first week is the one that matters.
The schedule
Weeks one to three: short video and social in short windows, with a 15-minute break after each. Fifteen minutes is about the length of one urge. From day eight, make the break 20. Everything else (music, games, long video) stays open.
Day 15: add a phone curfew, starting 30 minutes after your usual bedtime. It moves earlier as the weeks go on.
From week four: make each break longer by about a fifth, every three or four days. Only step up when you held two of your last three days. Never step down after a bad day, just don’t step up.
Two months in, at the earliest: feeds rest for hours at a time, and you open them on purpose instead of by reflex.
If you want it to run itself
This is the schedule Aegin runs for you. Phase 1, Dopamine Recalibration, is 21 days of short breaks. Phase 2, Dopamine Reduction, climbs a step every few days. Then comes The Atlantic, where the climb finishes and then holds. A sleep lock comes in on the same steps, and you can see the whole schedule before it starts.
There is no Ignore button. The way in early is to plead your case. You type what you want to open and why, and the Judge, an AI that reads your reason against your own record, answers yes, not yet, or no. It can refuse.
Aegin is free to start, and the limits work on the free plan. Pro is $12.99 a month or $99.99 a year in the US, and prices differ by country.
Try the Judge first
Tell it what you want to open and why, in your browser, with no account. Then decide.
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Last reviewed 12 October 2026.